Bug

Bug

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Hall sensors and motors

I've been working on adding the hall sensors to my motor, I'm putting six sensors in the back motor. I only expect to use 3 as per normal BLDC position feedback but I'm putting 3 more backup sensors in. I have heard they sometimes fail so this means if I do have a problem I can simply switch to the backup without having to teardown the motor to repair it.
I made 6 little pieces of fiberglass circuit board that fit snugly in the gaps in the motor stators, they have cutout pieces for the hall sensors, I'll glue the hall sensors to the fiberglass with polyester resin which I found out is used in the fabrication of the winding parts of AC induction motors. If it is suitable for this then it should be good for my motor too, its cheap and easy to use.
I stacked the motors together and took a photograph, I had to remove the plastic protection guard from the bottom motor as they would not fit with it in place.

I had my first quote back from one machine shop and I'm awaiting more, it will be 4-5 weeks before I actually have machined parts in my hands ready to assemble, so plenty of time to finish other tasks.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Drawings finished....

So finally after a couple of months my drawings are finished enough for quotes from machine shops. Since sending them out I found a couple of missing dims and one dim I had to change but these won't change the quotes themselves.
I have sent them out to places all over to try and get the best price. This can be risky in that I don't know the reputation of some of the places but I'm hopeful it will work out ok.
It will take a couple more weeks to decide on a shop and once I give the go ahead a few more weeks at least waiting for parts to be finished.
I have other work to do while I'm waiting, embedding hall and temp sensors in the stators and prepping other parts. I've also been looking around for some old used car batteries cheap to test my electronics out, its proven to be difficult as even old virtually dead batteries have value for recycling.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Thanks to Tom Staub at High Plains Tool and Mold

My local machine shop didn't have the right tools to measure the stator dowel hole locations properly; so after some searching I found a website where some guys built a Honda Insight with a Tdi lupo engine. They had an adapter plate machined and so must have measured the dimensions I required.
Tom Staub at High Plains Tool and Mold (ph: 303-806-0451, 3201 S Zuni St # C Sheridan, CO 80110-1996) was happy to help and went to the trouble of finding his notes on the adapter plate. Thanks Tom!
Now I can proceed with finishing my drawings.